I would like to add something to this convo! I have experimented a lot with getting cakes with level tops by using different brands of cake strips, mainly wilton versus Rose’s method, before I started using Rose’s recipes exclusively. I learned through trial and error, when I use baking strips or silicone strips for level baking, I get an edge that isn’t sealed, slightly crumbly with a weird soft layer that peels off easily. It’s always useable though and looks exactly identical to the edges in all your photos. When I take the strips off, the top is round but the edges are sealed due to the heat searing the crust into a crust! It’s like the difference between a pizza crust made on a wood fired ceramic stove and making the same pizza on an oven rack with an aluminum cookie sheet. Not the same result due to heat concentration/surface.

We see this exact example in Flour Girl’s pumpkin cake, above, where she forgot the strips. This has always meant the difference between sealed sides or soft sides for me. A solution I have employed in the past is taking off the strips very very carefully in the last 15 minutes of baking once the majority of the center has set if I really must have a sealed edge. If I am covering it, I just crumb coat with a thin icing to seal it and carry on. I know you all have done a ton of debating and comparing and experimenting about this phenomenon and it’s occurrence with certain pans. I think your experiments are amazing! I just think this problem is caused by the strips and not the pans so much.

Look at the experiment with the ramekin and the small cake pan. The ramekin didn’t have a cake strip on it, I bet! Also, they get much hotter than an aluminum or metal pan, hence why we cut baking times or temperatures when we use those with cake batter. The cake pan and loaf pan experiment shows the same thing. I bet you didn’t use cake strips on the loaf pan! Once again, I am not trying to burst anyone’s bubble or say your observations aren’t totally awesome (because they are!!) but I have seen this enough times, I can’t help but see this correlation.